Perfect Pitch Training

There are some who believe that perfect pitch training is not worthwhile because they think a person cannot learn the skill, that you must be born with it. It may surprise you, though, that the majority of musical scholars are aware that the ability can be developed as an adult. There is, however, an element of doubt in many minds as to whether you can purposely train yourself to have perfect pitch and how to do it.

There are several common methods in use to try to teach the ability. To begin with, almost all perfect pitch training methods begin with the message, 'be positive'. You do need to have an optimistic view, which will allow you to progress. However, if you are excessively skeptical, your pessimism will dominate. What usually happens is that your ear will develop due to training and this will re-enforce your belief. This happens as the acuity of the ear improves gradually. Training your ear with a strong positive attitude is the right path, but don't think just believing and imagining is enough on its own, you will get out what you put in to perfect pitch training.

When you begin, you will be learning to hear the differences between the notes, other than their fundamental pitch. The “chroma”, “pitch colors” and “note timbres” are some names given to these qualities. Much of the trainig available will fail to really explain these timbres, which can lead to some frustration. In some cases, you will read that you should listen to, for example, a 'C' on your instrument with eyes closed. Listen closely and pay attention to the emotions and imagery or memories that it makes you feel. This is all very vague. This type of approach will only work if, by coincidence, your ear tunes in to the quality of the note needed to disce
it from others. More likely, you will just begin dreaming about something else.

There are other techniques, which teach you to remember a particular note by associating it with a melody where it is the tonic. It is thought that the note can take on a special meaning as part of a particular melody. You can make an attempt to learn the notes with this method. The drawback is that there is little that is absolute about the method. If you are trying to remember melodies in their correct key so as to remember note pitches, are you really learning perfect pitch?

The best approach is to learn about harmonics (also called overtones) and how to listen to them. When listening to individual tones, we tend to concentrate on the fundamental frequency of the sound. We don't tend to tune in to the many multiples of the fundamental frequency. It is the make-up of these, which gave a tonal sound its timbre. When people hear perfect pitch “colors”, they are most likely hearing a perceived variance in the harmonic levels between the notes. The most definitive step forward in perfect pitch training is learning about how to listen to harmonics.